Common Conditions

Vascular Surgery - Erectile Dysfunction

What does the surgery involve?

There are many variations of this procedure, which is beyond the scope of this section. The operation takes approximately 4-6 hours. The patient is asleep under general anesthesia. In the most commonly and probably most successful approach to penile revascularization, the donor artery is harvested for the abdomen. The inferior epigastric artery is a blood vessel that supplies blood to one of the abdominal muscles. Removing this artery has no effect on the health of this muscle. This blood vessel harvesting requires an incision on the belly. The artery is detached from its upper attachment and swung down onto the top surface of the penis by tunneling it through the hernia ring. There is a second incision on the scrotum or penis. Once on the top of the penis the inferior epigastric artery is attached to the recipient artery the surface artery of the penis (dorsal artery). Patients routinely stay in hospital a single night, miss one week from work and need to avoid physical exertion including sexual activity for several weeks after surgery.